Gotham City Skyline
by Hidden Relevance
Summary: A series of short fics/drabbles/who knows what else set in Gotham. Most will be Bruce-centric but I imagine other characters might slip in! New: Unspoken Fear
1. Sleeping Alone

**I've written several ficlet collections for other fandoms, and since I haven't seen any for Batman Begins, I thought I'd start another!**

**BTW, the Batman francise is over 60 years old, and I'm only 24. How exactly would I own anything?**

Sleeping Alone

He rarely sleeps at all, does my Master Bruce. Between his daylight persona of a billionaire playboy and his moonlight one as Gotham's darkest knight, a few hours is all he ever catches. Most nights, even less. I cannot count the number of mornings that I have found his bed empty.

I suppose the tabloids would hardly be surprised at that fact, though I dare say they'd be surprised if they knew how few of his young ladies have even seen his bedroom. He shuffles them through his day planner like playing cards for date after date, playing his role to the hilt. Still, he never lets them truly know him. No, Master Bruce may enjoy his young ladies, but he does not let himself care too much. He's constantly on guard when he's with them and dares not relax or trust, as well he should not.

Neither does he sleep beside them. Those young ladies may never know, but he's very careful to keep them from his bed. There are more than half a dozen guest rooms at the manor and nearly a third of that number at the penthouse, any of which might easily be mistaken for the master suite. It is in one of these that his young ladies wake (usually alone), never knowing that he successfully barred them from the one place that he is secure enough to dream.

Sadly, I know it is more often than not the nightmares that find him first, but I do hope that he dreams pleasant dreams on occasion. I cannot imagine anyone who deserves them more.

**Hope you enjoyed it. Reviews are love!**


	2. Honoring his Memory

**Here's the next little installment! This character is Talia, the little known daughter of Ra's al Gul. She is in fact mentioned in the special features of Batman Begins, so I think she can easily belong in the Nolanverse.**

Under a flickering streetlight that cast shadows to transform her lovely face into something almost sinister, she flows through katas like an untamed river. At times, she is fast and vicious, tumbling about as water through rapids; others, she slows, each movement a subtle dance, graceful though still unstoppable. Her feet and hands pound against the pavement as she continues in her violent recital, completely consumed with whatever shadow she's decided to fight on this fearful street.

She has an audience, though she doesn't deign to notice their presence. Predators have come, thinking to claim the sweet young thing out all alone in the Narrows as their prey, but they've stopped, both awed and unsettled by the sheer danger this woman represents. Rumor has led them to expect a mouse, but they have found a panther, every inch a hunter in her own right.

After the night has nearly passed completely, she finally slows to a stop; her body succumbing to an almost inhuman stillness. With the dawn at her back, she begins to carefully pick her way down the street and toward the ferry leading back to the city itself. She has come to this dark metropolis to see the place where her father died--to perhaps find some sense of closure. As yet, she feels neither grief nor rage, only the odd sense of being set adrift.

The League of Shadows, her father's greatest accomplishment, is now naught but ghosts, cut down (as he was) by the man who should have been their champion. At least, so her father had believed. His daughter is still unconvinced. Either way, be he a champion or traitor, she does not come to kill him. She only wishes to see this man, this Bruce Wayne, who has so completely shattered her life. To see if, perhaps, he was and is more than her father understood.

She wonders if she is a poor daughter to think such things, to deny her father vengeance, but she finds she cannot hate his killer. All her life she has strived to attain her father's approval; she's stolen, seduced, assassinated: whatever he required of her. And yet, even now, she doubts that her father ever loved her. He'd wanted a strong son, and he'd been given a frail little daughter.

So, no, she does not seek the life of her father's young protégé. She will let him live in hope that one day, he might live up to her father's wishes. It is, she believes, the only way to truly honor her father's memory.

**It felt odd writing all of that in active-tense, but hopefully it was effective! Reviews are love!**


	3. Unspoken Fear

**The next in this series of ficlets- this one focusing on an as yet unspoken fear of Bruce's. Or at least one that I can picture him having.**

**Still Nolanverse property- this is just my own little corner of the sandbox.**

Bruce wasn't afraid of much that might be called 'mundane.' His greatest fears were incorporeal, untouchable concepts like failure and death. Not his own, of course, but of the innocents of Gotham, and that of those few he loved and trusted. No, he had few tangible fears.

His more visible fear was now shared with most of the populace of Gotham in the form of his symbol of the darkness haunting the city streets. Yes, he had to admit that bats still frightened him. Even after all the time he'd spent as their much larger cousin, they still set his heart beating faster in his chest with the sound of their wings or their small squeaks and chitters as they entered the cave. Even the smell they left behind could set his pulse racing. It was his own rather public phobia, and he'd grown to accept it. Even to embrace it.

There was one other thing that he feared, however. One he had yet to face; one horror yet to tame. This fear, he'd kept to himself. He'd never told a soul, though he could guess his oldest friend and guardian knew. Alfred never seemed to miss anything when it came to his young Master. No, Bruce had found this fear was one he could never speak aloud; the terror lurked too close to the surface, choking his voice the few times he did try to speak it.

It, he knows, was the real reason his parents died. A smooth milky shine had led to greed and rage, and finally, that devastating moment before a man with a gun.

He could never stand the sight of them near him, though he might often be forced to do so at any number of his lavish parties. While most of the women would drape themselves in diamonds and gold, a few always chose strings of his nemesis, layering them about their necks so very unaware of the danger they held.

Nor could he stand the touch of them. There's been no few of the gold-digger crowd that has been spurned by the billionaire, never knowing why he'd decided they were beneath him. Why he'd turned them away with a cocky sneer- the one the tabloids most often captured in their photos.

Bruce wondered if he'd ever find a way to control the panic he felt around those luminous orbs.

He doubted it.

Realistically, he knew he would always see death in their image: a death as innocuous as a string of pearls around his mother's neck.

**Hope that made sense to someone besides me! Review and let me know!**


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